Management Lessons From TV: What We Can Learn From ’30 Rock’s’ Liz Lemon

Liz Lemon is everyone’s favorite frazzled lady on television. Let’s face it. We take pleasure in that fact that she makes us look like sophisticated ladies who have our lives together. Of course this is a woman who stole a baby from work, makes up songs about eating cheese at night, sported a real mustache in public, hallucinated a conversation with Oprah and dumped Jon Hamm (I don’t care how dumb he was or that he had hooks for hands. No one dumps Jon Hamm!) so the bar is pretty low.

However she is the head writer of The Girlie Show which means she did something right and her staff does show up week after week to put on a show so let’s take a look at we can take away from Liz Lemon as a manager.

1. Don’t Let Your Employees Take Advantage of You: Though Liz does coddle some of her coworkers namely Tracy Jordan and Jenna Maroney (mainly because they are certifiably crazy) she does know how to show everyone she is a tough boss. In the first season when one of her employees called her the name that there is no equivalent for for a man, not even fungdart, Liz decided she wanted everyone to think she was super nice. She made cookies, lent out money and let everyone leave early which resulted in her not sleeping for three days and writing the entire show. She soon learned, by watching a very inspiring episode of Designing Women, someone always has to be the boss and people don’t always like their boss but sometimes you just have to live with that.

2. Find a Mentor: Oh and has Liz ever found a mentor in Jack Donaghy. If only Jack Donaghy worked in all of our offices. Even though he is sexist, a die-hard Republican, a womanizer, an alcoholic, a nervous eater and probably a little bit schizophrenic, he is one of the most loved characters on television right now. For all his faults, he has given Liz more courage, helped her be a better manager and most importantly taught her that if you aren’t in black tie after 6 pm you may be mistaken for a farmer.

3. Don’t date someone who works in your building because they may turn out to be your third cousin: When Liz decided to try new things she started dating this extremely handsome guy that worked at MSNBC. Everything seems to be going great until they realize they both have the same aunt once removed.

3. Don’t Steal a Baby From Work: It is just not good to steal babies, especially from someone at work because they know you.